Anida Yoeu Ali & Masahiro Sugano awarded grants from the Tacoma Artists Initiative Program

IAS faculty members Anida Yoeu Ali & Masahiro Sugano were each awarded grants from the Tacoma Artists Initiative Program administered by the Tacoma Arts Commission. The grant supports independent artists in engaging, enlightening, and inspiring their communities as well as audiences from the Puget Sound area and beyond.

Ali’s grant supports the construction of “Hello, How are you?” a large-scale mixed media outdoor installation challenging the cycle of gentrification in which artists become complicit participants to urbanization.

Sugano’s award assists in funding his current short film project titled “Headlock.” The film is envisioned as a dreamlike allegory centered around two working class male characters set in the city of Tacoma as they become trapped in their own brute force, inarticulate mumblings and indulgent soliloquies while wandering across a changing terrain of natural landscapes and urban backdrops.

Both Ali and Sugano are long time collaborators of Studio Revolt, an independent media lab they co-founded producing motion imagery and performance projects.